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yourlittlebunnyy · 3 months ago

Text

Snow

main masterlist - kallias masterlist

summary: You loved each other, Suspended on a thread, Of snow.

warnings: death, happy but also not very happy ending

w/c: 4k

a/n: this fic is basically "snow" by maxence fermine

enjoy! 🤍

Your son decided to return to visit his now elderly father, who had retired to the top of a mountain.

At dawn he left the palace. Saying goodbye to his friends and his mate, he made his way north.

It was a journey to the sun of his heart. The purity of the world and of the light offered themselves to his gaze.

As he walked with slow steps along the road he felt a pure and shimmering joy. He was free and happy. He carried with him as his only baggage the gold of faith and his love for his father.

But what was to come happened. Wanting to love the snow of his Court too much, he forgot to fear it. And it almost devoured him with its love.

While crossing a mountain, he lost himself and his luggage in a terrible snowstorm. He fell prey to the fury of the elements and barely managed to save himself through makeshift shelter.

Your son found shelter under the overhang of a cliff, sheltered from the wind, and there, shivering with cold, at the end of his strength, alone in the thick of darkness, alone in the depths of the snow, alone in the vertigo of his loneliness, alone in his silence, where he could have died a hundred times of cold, hunger, fatigue, disappointment and exhaustion, he survived.

He survived because what he saw that night, that thing, that extraordinary thing that came from afar, that sublime and beautiful thing was the most beautiful and sublime image he had ever been allowed to see in his entire life. And that image he could never forget again.

That thing so beautiful was you. When your son crouched beneath the rocky overhang, you were there before his eyes. You looked as fragile as a dream. Remained forever a young female, clothed only in a light white robe despite the great cold. You were dead. And you were resting under a meter of ice.

You were not really resting. You were dead. But your coffin was as transparent as crystal. Your son immediately felt connected to you, a total stranger.

For him it was not like standing in front of a dead body. Yours was not an ordinary death. You were a wonderful presence.

First of all, you were wearing only a light robe. What were you doing, dressed like that, under three feet of ice? This was the first question that came to his mind. But he could not find an answer.

Where were you from? How long had you been a prisoner of that transparent, perennial trap? And, come to think of it, were you real?

You, the young female trapped under the ice, seemed to him as fragile and tender as a dream. The radiance of your golden hair responded like a flashlight flame. You clearly did not belong to his Court. Your eyelids, though closed, allowed the icy blue of your eyes to shine through, as if the wear and tear of the ice had diaphanoused the tenuous skin that protected your gaze. Your face was as white as snow.

He looked at you in silence, silently wondering why he felt so much affection for you.

He thought you were a dream.

It seemed to him that your image was being softly shaped by the geometry of his dreams. But in fact your vision was not the result of a hallucination at all. You stood there, under the ice, three feet from your son, and he loved you dearly.

He stayed all evening filling his eyes with you. And he did not tire of it for a single moment. There he was, motionless despite the cold, contemplating what he had never hoped to dream of.

For him, that night, time stood still.

Who were you? And why were you in that place?

He did not know.

But he knew one thing, one thing only, sad and beautiful: your face asleep under the ice would never die.

At first light of day, your son planted a cross in the precise place where he had made your gruesome discovery. And he resumed the path in search of his father.

He could never have forgotten you. Your face haunted him all the way.

He went through the whole Court, and one morning he came to the door of father's dwelling. A servant opened it for him.

He stepped aside with a bow, letting him in. He waited for Kallias in a cozy parlor, comforted by the warmth coming from the fireplace.

When the male entered the room he embraced him.

"I have missed you." Said your mate to your son. He responded with equal sentiment.

One evening he asked Kallias, "What was my mother like?" He stopped breathing for a brief moment. He had never asked anything about you.

"I would never have seen the light if it hadn't been for her."

"What was she like?" He insisted.

"Love is the most difficult art. And writing, dancing, composing, painting, even running a Court are the same thing as loving. Funambulisms. The difficult thing is to advance without falling. I, in the end fell because of my love for her. But art saved me from despair and death. It's a long story, I think it would bore you."

"No." He begged him. "Please tell it to me!"

Kallias took a deep breath. "It goes back to when I was still young, a mere heir, just like you."

Your son pleaded him again to continue, and in the face of such insistence, he plunged into memories.

"It all began by magic. One day near the Solstice, as I was returning from a fight, I fell in love with your mother. She was a very different female from any I had ever known. At that time, Amarantha had just set foot in Prythian. I had participated in a very violent battle that had ended in a brilliant, beautiful and unpredictable victory. So I was returning as a winner. Triumphant but wounded. A soldier had disemboweled a male in front of me, I still had the senses of that scene: the taste of mud and blood everywhere in my mouth, the enemy soldiers rushing at him, that hostile face furrowed with hatred. The male had lunged at me, ready to stab me. Then I had felt something push me away, and then nothing but a bloody body from which the guts hung. But at the time it was an honor, the joys of war. One had to die or come back wounded.

I could never forget the sight of that body slumped on the ground. Then I fainted. They took me for dead. I stayed there all night under the lifeless body. The next morning someone heard my groans. They lifted the body and discovered my horrified face, the face of the heir. They treated me, and for several days I continued to deliriate. After a week, there was still horror in my eyes.

My father-your grandfather-came to me to congratulate me, and I was proud, but with a pride nonetheless clouded by the pain of what I had experienced.

Finally, when I had recovered my strength, I took the road back. I did not want to fight anymore, and not so much because of the wounds inflicted on me - since the beginning of Amarantha's tyranny I had been wounded six times - but because of the sheer disgust I felt towards war. I, the very one, the heir to the Winter Court, who had pledged my allegiance to our armies, realized that I no longer had any desire to kill.

I therefore left the army and set out on foot for home. And it was there, on the way back, that the miracle was accomplished.

Crippled by the cold, at the end of my strength, with the horror of war still in my eyes, alone in the thick of the darkness and tragedy I had just experienced alone in the abyss of winter, alone with the vertigo of loneliness, alone in my silence, where I could have died a hundred times of cold, hunger, fatigue, disappointment and exhaustion, I survived.

I survived because what I saw that day, that thing, that extraordinary thing that came from a distant place, sent by Mother to compensate for the horror of the male slumped on the ground, that sublime and beautiful thing was the most sublime and beautiful image I had ever been allowed to see in my entire life. And that image I could never forget again.

The image was that of a young female balancing on a tightrope, a young female as light as a bird, a funambulist who was performing with the grace of a squirrel above a silvery river. She was very high in the sky. More than walking the tightrope she floated through the air as if by magic. I watched her glide suavely into the blue up there, standing in front of her invisible wire, barbell in her hands, one would have called her an angel.

I slowly approached the river, and the beauty of the young female captivated me. It was the first time I had seen a Fae from another Continent. She seemed to be flying. Intrigued, I advanced further. She was now perfectly above me.

A dense crowd had gathered on the shore to witness the strange apparition. I approached an old man and, still looking at her, asked him, "Who is she?"

The old man, without even looking at me, replied with a tremor in his voice, "She is a funambulist. Or a bird lost in the air."

She was a funambulist, and her life followed a single line. Straight.

She was from another continent. Her name was Y/n. They had nicknamed her Snow, because she had delicate features and ice-colored eyes. And also because when she darted through the air she seemed as light as a snowflake.

This is how she had begun. One day, while still a child, her path had crossed that of a traveling circus. Flabbergasted, she had discovered the possibility of daydreaming. Heedless of the dangers, she had decided to make it her own career. She had started with a tightrope stretched a few inches off the ground. Then, little by little, she had gone higher and higher both in height and in the mastery of her art. And so she had become the first female funambulist in the Winter Court. Up on the tightrope, she had never come down again.

My Y/n had become a funambulist for the sake of balance. She, whose life unfolded like a winding thread, littered with twists and turns that intertwined and dissolved the sinuosities of fate and the insipidness of existence, excelled in the subtle and insidious art of making evolutions on a tightrope.

She never felt more at ease than when she walked the wire a thousand feet above the ground. Straight ahead. Without ever deviating a single millimeter from her course.

It was her destiny.

To advance step by step.

From one end of life to the other.

Her prowess had conquered all the squares of my Court.

At nineteen, my Snow had already traveled more than a hundred kilometers on her tightrope, often risking her life. She had stretched her tightrope between the two towers of my palace and had balanced several hours above the rope, like an Esmeralda made of wind, snow, and silence.

Then she had repeated her feats in every building I owned, each time defying the laws of balance.

She was no mere funambulist. She proceeded through the air as if by magic.

Looking at her so far up there, her body standing upright in the sky like a white flame and her hair caressed by the wind, one would have called her the snow goddess. For in reality the hardest thing for her was not keeping her balance, or even mastering fear, much less walking that endless tightrope, on that thread of music interspersed with dazzling vertigo. The hardest thing, when she advanced into the light of the world, was not to turn into a snowflake.

By now they were claiming her from every corner of the Court of Winter. So she went and crossed with her rope into the Summer Court. Then, almost without realizing it, she made it all the way to the Court of Dawn, where I traveled only to be enraptured watching her. Never before had a performer from one Court performed in another, not in such period.

And I looked at her and already loved her. In my eyes, your mother seemed at once poetry, painting, calligraphy, dance and music. She was Snow and represented all the beauty of art.

When the beautiful stranger had finished the number on the tightrope and had returned to earth, I could not restrain my desire to approach her. I stepped forward and, in doing so, discovered the fineness of her features, the design of her mouth, the line of her eyebrows, and knew instantly that never again would I forget that face. I looked into her eyes, and in turn Snow squared me. There was no need for words. She smiled at me, and in that smile I lost my soul.

I knelt down, and said, "You are what I have been looking for. You are my mate."

Snow, on the other hand, was not looking for anyone. But my gesture seemed to her of such beauty that she delighted in it. And she married me.

The first years were happy. A happy event came to strengthen our bond. You.

You possess your mother's diaphanous beauty and my white hair. Our life was one of peace and silence. Gradually Snow settled more and more into my Court. Sometimes she felt homesick for her land, but she never complained about it.

What she missed most of all was her craft as a funambulist.

One night she dreamed of flying.

The next day, waking up, she thought about the dream again. Then she thought no more about it. The Solstice came, then passed. You grew in the ecstasy of light. Snow was happy. In one hand she held my love and in the other her own heart, which she offered to you. And that fragile barbell served to keep her balanced on the thread of happiness.

But one day the balance of that balance wheel became so fragile that it broke. One day the affection lavished on her by her loved ones was no longer enough to make her happy. She cruelly missed the life in the air. She thirsted again for vertigo, for thrills, for conquest. She thought only of becoming a funambulist again.

She asked permission to arrange one last performance. She wanted to stretch a rope from one mountain to another in the heart of our mountains.

Surely I estimated that desire insane, deeming the idea of endangering his life senseless, but, as a true mate, I bowed and agreed.

I had two of the best ropes come from the Autumn Court: one was short and thin, the other much thicker and five hundred yards long. Then I sent two servants to fasten the longer cable between the two highest peaks of the mountains.

Y/n slipped the barbell out of its case, put on her ballerina shoes, and, stretching the smaller cable in the garden, practiced for hours over tiny mountains of snow and a miniature ocean on which chunks of ice floated.

I did not tire of watching her. My mate was an unrivaled funambulist.

On that wire she was so happy, so beautiful, so ethereal, that every day I thanked Mother for giving her to me. Her hair was fluttering. She had a clear gaze. And she was walking on air.

The performance was set for the first days of the New Year. A crowd gathered from all over Prythian to witness your mother's feats.

When Snow placed her feet on the cable, the crowd rumbled. Up there, so high it made one dizzy just looking at her, she looked like a tiny white dot in space, a snowflake in the immensity of the sky. Armed with her barbell, for more than an hour and a half Snow performed high above the ground, slowly approaching the opposite side of the mountain. Below, I held my breath. One false step and it was certain death.

But she, perfectly mastering her art, advanced inexorably. Step by step. Blow after blow. Silence after silence. From vertigo to vertigo. She never stumbled.

It was the thread, which broke. Surely badly secured, the cable broke loose from the rock and plunged my mate and barbell into a fall of almost a thousand feet.

Those who saw her disappear there, in the heart of our mountains, took her for a bird falling from the sky.

Her body, surely fallen into a crevasse, was never found again. Snow had become snow and slept in the bed of her whiteness.

I never recovered from the loss of my wife. My two clumsy servants were dismissed without any other form of revenge on my part. A few days later it turned out that they had killed themselves by throwing themselves off a cliff. I felt neither joy nor sorrow.

I saw only one thing: my pain. I knew only one thing: that never again would I find the woman I had loved. Never again would I see Snow again. Never again would I see beauty again. Back I was in my home, now devoid of any joy, I threw off the robes of the High Lord. I promised myself that I would devote myself to your education and art. To absolute art.

So it was that I became, for love of a woman, a poet, musician, calligrapher, dancer. And painter. Because painting was clearly the most faithful link between the lost face and absolute art, the surest means of finding Snow again. And so in that art I excelled.

I got the equipment from a paint merchant - a wooden easel, silk brushes, a palette, an endless amount of colors -, had a small hut built in the garden and locked myself in it. I spent long years there, painting my mate whom I would never see again except in dreams.

However, I was never satisfied with one's work.

Her paintings, though splendid, seemed to me too colorful, too little resemblance. To reproduce Snow accurately I would have to make a completely white, virgin, purified painting. How to paint whiteness? My Y/n portraits were all beautiful, but there were none that resembled Snow.

I kept perfecting my art, day after day, night after night, never getting tired. Then I began to feel old. You, already united in a bond and grown up, went to live far away.

I found myself alone in front of the canvas. I would wear out my eyesight by dint of contemplating the image of my beautiful disappearance.

And one day, because of that incessant work, I became almost blind. And it was that very day, from the abyss of my grief, I painted the whitest and most beautiful of all her portraits.

There. Here the story ends. I never forgot your mother, just as I never ceased to revere and dipimg her. Even when I sank into myself. Especially when I sunk into myself. From the deepest blackness, I painted whiteness, discovered purity. Then I discovered that true light and true colors are always intrisically linked to the beauty of the soul.

Starting from the face of my beloved, I cultivated absolute art. Starting from the total absence of light I took hold of it and its nuances."

Kallias fell silent. Your son was seized with dizziness. He looked at his father and said, "I know where my mother is. I met her on my way here. She is dead, but it is as if she is still alive. She lives in a glass coffin. She is so beautiful that I stayed a whole night contemplating her." As he spoke he had a look lost in the void, his eyes still veiled by the breath of the dream. The story had been long and throbbing. Returning to the real world was difficult.

Your beloved merely smiled at the young man and nodded his approval. But it was clear he did not believe him. "How do you know? No one knows where she is. You don't even know what your mother's face looks like."

"The mountain digested her and returned her body. She is there, under the ice, a meter from the surface. She is there, in her glass coffin, untouched, as beautiful as when you met her. I swear I know where she is. I saw her by accident, coming here. Her face impressed me so much that I stayed beside her all night. I planted a cross at the site of her ice tomb. If you wish, I can lead you to her."

Kallias realized that he was speaking the truth, and he could not hold back a tear.

"I knew that one day she would send me a messenger. But I did not know that this messenger would come so late in my life. And what's more, my son." Then he turned to him and laid a hand on his shoulder. "And to say that since she died every day I have tried to find her again in painting, in music, in poetry, the snow beauty of her face. And to say that now her face is within my sight. And to say that I will not be able to see her."

The next day your son asked your mate, "Have you thought about my proposal? When do you wish me to take you before my mother's grave?"

Kallias sighed, then replied in a sad voice, "My son. This trip would be useless. I know you speak the truth, but what good would it do for an old man like me, now almost blind, to find the grave of a dead woman? Where she is, my bride is at peace. May her isolation be respected for eternity." Then he took his leave and disappeared into his room.

A month passed. Your son dared not speak of you in the presence of your husband. Besides, Kallias himself seemed to avoid the subject.

Every day, his father would simply say hello before breakfast. Then he would remain invisible for the rest of the day, and during dinner he would remain silent.

But then, one morning, standing on the bank of a river, your mate said to him, "Tomorrow we're going to find Snow."

They left at dawn. Your son walked ahead, and Kallias followed him, orienting himself with the sound of his footsteps.

Whenever the young male offered his hand to help him over some steeper or treacherous passage, your beloved refused it and punctually overcame the obstacle without need of help.

At night they slept in villages on mats spread out on the ground. When, upon entering a village, Kallias introduced himself and announced his presence, the doors opened in front of him as if by magic. Your son was amazed ti how deeply everyone seemed to respect and admire his father. And he understood how fortunate he was to still have him beside him.

Not everyone gets to meet divinities while still alive.

The journey was long, unceasingly white. White as the silence that accompanied them. White as the snow that covered the valleys.

Finally, one morning, the first mountain peaks appeared. Their road began to climb toward the sky and its purity.

They were the hardest hours.

His father began to show signs of fatigue. But he pretended not to, since they were no longer far behind. The journey was coming to an end.

When he saw the cross, your son trembled with emotion.

"Father!" He shouted. "I found it!" He rushed under the rock, there where, on a stormy night, he had discovered the grave of you, his mother, and had a cry of surprise.

"What is it?" Kallias asked impaneled. "Has snow disappeared forever in the heart of the mountain? Has there been an avalanche?"

"No." Said your son. "Far from it. It is as if the Mother has understood our appeal and foreseen our coming. Y/n is there. But her body is even closer than last time. She is barely two or three centimeters from the veil of ice. I can almost touch her."

You were there. You, a creature so beautiful, so bare, as fragile as a dream. You were dead, yet you seemed alive. You were resting under the ice. And soon you would emerge from your grave. Your body so delicate and your skin so diaphanous made you look even more fragile.

Your son threw himself on all fours and scratched the ice with his fingernails. Finally your face appeared. He took your husband's hand and placed it on your face.

"Do you feel her face? Her skin?" Your beloved's hand caressed your cheek. He had become completely blind. But he did not need his eyes to recognize the lines of your face. You were so well preserved that the simple pressure of his palm on your eyelids was enough for him: "It's really her. It's my Snow. You did not lie to me." He fell to his knees before you and wept his hot tears on your icy face, having found again his mate.

Kallias never descended from the mountain. He lay down on the ice, next to you, his greatest love, and closed his eyes.

Your son tried to dissuade him by telling him that to stay there was madness, but his father replied in a calm voice, "Leave me alone. I have found my place. For eternity."

Then he fell asleep beside your intact body. He died letting himself be overcome by the whiteness of the world. He was happy. At the height of your heart.

You loved each other

Suspended on a thread

Of snow.

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